Musique Concrète
The genre was created by Pierre Schaeffer (aux chemis de fer, aux tourniquets, aux casseroles) in Paris in the 1940s. He recorded natural sounds, manipulated them with various tape techniques to change their timbre, organized them and played them back in a musical context. Other types of music begin with abstract ideas that become concrete only in performance while musique concrète starts with concrete material that is made abstract during experimentation and composition - according to Schaeffer.
Tape techniques used
- Looping the tape, causing repetitive rhythmic or metrical patterns
- Changing the Direction of the tape
- Changing the Speed of the tape, affecting the pitch
- Causing an Echo or a Delay
- Cutting and Splicing the tape
- Changing the Attack (or envelope)
Everywhere at the End of Time is the tenth release by the Caretaker, an alias of English musician Leyland Kirby. Released from September 2016 to March 2019, its six albums depict the stages of dementia by degrading several samples of big band music. Inspired by the success of his 2011 record An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, Kirby produced the series with the mission of "giving the alias dementia". The albums drew several comparisons to other experimental and ambient musicians, including William Basinski, Burial, Gavin Bryars, and Loscil.
While the first three stages explore a big band style, the last three stages explore a noise style. Kirby announced that Everywhere "gives the alias dementia", which some websites though meant that Kirby had dementia. The entire series ends with a choral and a minute of silence, representing the Caretaker's canonical death. To promote the series, Kirby performed at festivals Rewire and Unsound with music videos by visual artist Weirdcore. Alongside Stage 6, Kirby also released Everywhere, an Empty Bliss (2019), a compilation album of unreleased material.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryg8_HQ0VX0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln4_pA48GVs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL998ajnjN4
